So Halloween is coming.

Said another way, a ticking time bomb is rapidly approaching for our country.

Halloween is, in an oddly different way to other holidays, a very special time in most of our hearts.  We may have memories of amazing Thanksgiving dinners and football, or special Christmas traditions shared with loved ones, but Halloween is a beast of its own.

This day is rooted in something more than tradition, because it’s the only holiday where you can go balls to the wall anti-tradition, and doing so only makes it sweeter.  No one is going to shove turkey down your throat at Halloween (I dislike turkey), or be sure to put out milk and cookies (still cool btw).  It is the anti-holiday.  Anything goes, and the more anything, the better.

Which means, we all LOVE it.  It’s a holiday of choices.  Dress up, or don’t.  Decorate, or don’t.  Throw a party; make eyeball punch and cat poop cake, scare people, laugh.  Or, do absolutely nothing.  It’s our one free-for-all day we allow ourselves in our structured world, and we not only look forward to it, we need it.

As you have now probably guessed, like many others this is my favorite holiday.  And this year, I’m torn.  No that’s not even right, I’m conflicted.

The holiday lover in me, that has ridiculously deep nostalgic attachments to this day, says f*ck it lets GO man!  The person inside of me that’s tired of all the changes this year, agrees.  The person in me who wants choices back, agrees.  The parent in me that says I would single-handedly fight off a hoard of bloody-ass, brain-sucking zombies to ensure my 5-year old could dress up and have the most amazing halloween ever; right at the point where she’s actually old enough to reeeeeaaaly enjoy it, and the last year we’ll be in the amazing neighborhood we live in before we move again next year (my husband is still active duty military), agrees.

And then.*

The pragmatist/objectivist in me says, that’s not realistic, and I need to put on my adult hat.  Because now, the consequences of exposure to our lovely Covid reach farther than just health and safety; not all jobs are tele-workable, and you or a family member pops positive?**  Home and no pay for two weeks.  Kid or family member pops positive, quarantine and potential shut down of school/daycare (those that are running), so again, the same socio-economic consequences.  And many more examples from there, most of which end in the loss of earnings, jobs, and/or childcare, not to mention the health consequences.

Are these policies bad?  I don’t think so; I understand and fully respect why they’re there.  But do we now have to take them into account for big holidays like Halloween?  Yeah, probably.  Probably more then we want to admit as Halloween-lovers.

So through all of this mental tug-o-war (lets be honest, how many months of it?), where most of us have probably felt like we’ve sucked more than we’ve succeeded, I’ve been trying to establish a consistent internal approach to help ME wade through all of these constant changing decisions and situations… like Halloween.  Let me diverge for a moment to explain-

I am a very process-oriented, analytical person.

I like having methodologies of approach to things in life, be they big or small, important or miniscule.  In fact I even remember my mother at one point comparing me to the female lead character from the show Bones.  To this day I’m still not sure if it was a compliment or not…  (hehe love you Mom.)

I don’t really remember being like that as a kid, but I probably was.  Even in college, I was the planner; which is hilarious because two of my best friends, who I still have the pleasure of talking with to this day, were nooooot.  We would be partying, they would be laughing and goofing off (rightly so), and here behind the jokes and shenanigans my brain was silently calculating where we were going to sleep, what food we had, how we were getting home, etc.  I still haven’t decided if that’s a curse or a blessing.  I choose to see it as the latter.  Now, anyways.

The military afforded me a great outlet for this trait, especially in aircraft maintenance, because everything is very step-by-step, to the book, procedure-oriented.  But despite that, the big lesson it taught me was fluidity within those rigid boundaries.

My experiences there planted the seeds of the concept of Acceptable Risk.

Bring us back to present day, and in that planted idea and with the help of an amazing group of badass ladies, I’ve finally found the answer to my approach.

In our latest move here, we randomly landed on an incredible block.

Long story short, there is a group of us that live (or have lived, or are related to people that do live) on the block, into which they generously invited me, and we all communicate pretty much daily; sharing everything from successes to failures to jokes to WTFs.  We all have our strengths, and quirks, and that’s ok.  We’re human and shockingly not afraid of it.

But what I’ve been impressed with and somewhat surprised by, is that even through this pandemic environment, with each of us/our families facing different challenges, the group has not only remained strong, but also understanding and supportive.

A couple months ago I started, or I should say my brain started, trying to find the root of our group’s success amidst what can only be described as the complete and udder chaos of the first half of this year.  Logic dictated under all that stress it should have imploded.

But it didn’t.  It got stronger.

The answer to this, to finding an overall personal approach to our ever-changing world, and to Halloween, turn out to all be the same.

Acceptable Risk, and respect for everyone else’s.  

Our group survived what could have been a very volatile time because everyone -perhaps subconsciously who knows- chose to act on their own family situation’s acceptable risk, but not put their choices on anyone else in the group.

Here there is an inherent respect for each family to make its own decisions based on their acceptable level of risk, and an understanding that that level of risk may change from day-to-day depending on that family’s situation.

As you’ve read previously, my kiddo is now in Kindergarten, in person.  And she LOVES it.  LOVES.  It’s what she needed.  Now this is two-fold, because for our family, it was an acceptable risk to send her as we were comfortable with her school’s safety procedures.  But also, now my personal level of acceptable risk has changed, because as a parent I see how much pure joy school has brought her; but if she gets sick, we get sick, or we’ve even been exposed to anyone who is positive, we have to keep her home.

I’d have to tell my daughter she can’t go to a place she loves even if we personally aren’t sick, and proceed to watch the joy drain from her face.  After the last 6 months, that would crack my heart in half if I could have prevented it.

So now, I’m even more careful than I was before in some ways; not out of fear of illness, but out of preservation of joy.  Strange how life changes like that.

Which flips us back to Halloween.

What we need is to just establish, early on, what the “standard” is going to be so that each family can then adjust their plan based on their own level of acceptable risk.

Fear can embolden us to say and do things we normally wouldn’t, especially in this environment.  We need, as a society, to put that fear back in its box and move forward, together.

As for Halloween, let’s focus on what we CAN do, and quiet the fear of nostalgic loss in our heads.

I refuse to be scared my kid won’t have a good Halloween– instead I’m going to find solutions to make it amazing, that fit within my own family’s sphere of acceptable risk.  It may not look like other years, but so what?

Who wants to wear the same costume every year anyway.

——————

* For Mr. & Mrs. Anders:  AND NO AND DEN!!!!

**Obviously there are worse health consequences for having Covid, which we’ve seen.  This is not meant to, in any way, minimize those health consequences or the deaths of loved ones that have occurred as a result.  I have a very high respect for any one or family who has been through this personally.  In this article, I’m trying to focus on broader consequences instead of specifically focusing on health.  I hope I can beg your understanding.